Anglicanism and the Christian Church

Abstract

PAUL AVIS. Anglicanism and Christian Revised and expanded edition. London, England: T&T Clark (a Continuum imprint), 2002. Pp. xxii +393, bibliography, indices. $29.95 (paper). Paul Avis, Director of Centre for Study of Christian Church, says in his preface that his goal is offer an interpretation of Anglican understanding of Christian Church. He sets out to present theological resources of Anglican ecclesiology in historical perspective... His ultimate goal is bring out clearly fact of a coherent Anglican position, or consensus, on nature of Church. Avis does not intend here write a history of Anglicanism or of Church of England. Rather, he wants provide a of Anglican ecclesial identity, self-definition and apologetic. It provides some of resources or raw material for an Anglican doctrine of Church. Avis divides his study into three parts. In first he focuses on Anglican Reformers, Hooker and Field, and their distinctive Anglican ecclesiology. Avis names this paradigm, because it involved an identity of church and society in a single Christian commonwealth. In Part Two, Avis traces consolidation of Anglican ecclesiology in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This consolidated ecclesiology Avis calls the apostolic paradigm. Avis holds that during this time, despite emergence of distinct traditions within Church of England, a consensus prevailed that Anglicanism was both Catholic and Reformed. This Apostolic paradigm assumes that church is a society with its own integrity, having an essential ministry of word and sacrament derived not from state but from apostles through their successors, bishops. In Part Three, Avis examines demise of Erastian paradigm and development of Apostolic paradigm by Tractarians. Avis thinks this group is often misleadingly described as unified. In fact, Avis insists, it is vital an accurate understanding of history of Anglican self-understanding distinguish among conservative old high churchmen and innovative positions of radical Tractarians. Once this distinction is made, one should distinguish between those Tractarians who stayed in Church of England and those who became Roman Catholics. Avis can then demonstrate that radical Tractarians, in trying unprotestantise Church of England, actually challenged and tried subvert prevailing consensus that Anglican church was both Protestant and Catholic. Against this subversive effort very different kinds of Anglicans-evangelicals, liberal Anglicans, and old high churchmen-often joined forces. …